Quotes About Values

The person who has inspired me my whole life is my Mom, because she taught me commitment. She sacrificed.

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.

But my main concern isn't to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit (we'll survive just fine, thank you). Rather, my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse—and more generally a penchant for subjectivism—which is, I believe, inimical to the values and future of the Left.

At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.

What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right.

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.

Any society which does not insist upon respect for all life must necessarily decay.

The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

You are right in speaking of the moral foundations of science, but you cannot turn around and speak of the scientific foundations of morality.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair.

The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty, and truth. Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy, dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

We have emerged from a war in which we had to accept the degradingly low ethical standards of the enemy. But instead of feeling liberated from his standards, and set free to restore the sanctity of human life and the safety of noncombatants, we are in effect making the low standards of the enemy in the last war our own for the present. Thus we are starting toward another war degraded by our own choice.

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves—such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine.

Sans culture morale, aucune chance pour les hommes.

If you can't do respect for yours, you can't do for others.

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive

there are no arbitrary constants ... nature is so constituted that it is possible logically to lay down such strongly determined laws that within these laws only rationally determined constants occur (not constants, therefore, whose numerical value could be changed without destroying the theory).

The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition.

A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after death.